Kent Hance
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Kent Hance (born November 14, 1942) is a former Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives for the 19th Congressional District of Texas, serving from 1979 to 1985; he later switched to the Republican Party. Even while a Democrat, Hance was quite conservative. He attended Texas Tech and went to law school at the University of Texas. After law school, he was admitted to the Texas bar and became a practicing lawyer in Lubbock, Texas in 1968; during this period, he was also a professor at Texas Tech.
Hance served in the Texas State Senate from 1974 to 1978, when he ran successfully for the U.S. House. His opponent in his first House race was a young George W. Bush; Hance ran by portraying Bush as "not a real Texan" because of his privileged upbringing and Yale education, in contrast to the image that Bush would later develop. Hance later said in interviews that for Mr. Bush, the lesson was that "he wasn't going to be out-Christianed or out-good-old-boyed again." [1] (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/07/opinion/07KRIS.html)
In 1984, Hance voluntarily left the House in order to seek the Democratic nomination for the Senate. He did not receive the nomination, and switched his party registration to Republican in 1985. In 1988, he served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
External link
- Entry in the Congressional Biographical Dictionary (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=H000144)